The manufacture of textile articles, and primarily the manufacture of garments, has become highly automated in recent years with sewing machinery or equipment having been developed to automatically cut, fold, sew and stack fabric or textile work pieces to form the work pieces into finished garments and parts of garments for later attachment. As such automated sewing equipment has developed, greater emphasis has been placed on the ability of such equipment to accurately and uniformly process the textile work pieces at greater processing rates with less skilled operators running the equipment without sacrificing or impairing the quality of the garments being produced.
For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,437,238 and 5,657,711 of Price et al. disclose garment hemming systems in which a garment is placed on a series of spindles. Upon actuation, the machine automatically folds and sews the hem in the body of a T-shirt or sweat shirt. A series of detectors or sensors mounted along a sewing path for the work pieces detect the position of the edge of the garment body and automatically control the operation of edge guides to automatically adjust the position of the edge of the garment body with respect to the sewing path to insure that the proper hem width is maintained during sewing to form a high-quality finished garment. As a result, using such automated equipment, garments and garment parts can be produced with greater reliability and at increased production rates using less skilled workers, enabling a reduction in the costs of manufacturing of such garments and garment parts without detracting from the quality of the garments produced.
To achieve these goals of greater uniformity, quality and production rates for the garments, while at the same time enabling the garments to be produced by less skilled workers, conventional automated sewing machinery or equipment has had to become much more sophisticated and complex in its operation, requiring multiple detectors or sensors and microprocessor based control elements. Consequently, the manufacture, installation, set-up and maintenance such conventional automated sewing equipment also has become increasingly complex, typically requiring extensive point-to-point wiring for electrical connections between components or devices and their controls. In addition, highly trained or skilled personnel, including electricians, generally are necessary for the set-up and maintenance of conventional automated sewing equipment in a customer's plant.
Since many plants, especially those in remote locations, do not have such highly trained or skilled technical personnel on staff, it often is necessary for the manufacturers to send technicians to the field to a customer's plant if maintenance is required or there is a problem with the automated sewing equipment. Such technicians visits are expensive for both the customer in terms of machine down time and for the manufacturer in travel costs and technician time, and are especially costly where the technician must travel out of country, which is increasingly the case given the current trend of much of the garment production shifting to overseas markets such as South America
Under such circumstances, it is often difficult and significantly expensive to get appropriate parts and/or a technician from the manufacturer to the customer's plant on a timely basis to diagnose and then fix the problem with the equipment. Further, with the extensive point-to-point wiring typically found in most automated sewing equipment where there are sometimes hundreds of individual wires and connections that must be checked, to diagnose problems with the equipment. The complexity of the equipment thus further complicates the repair and troubleshooting of problems with the equipment, often making it impractical to perform diagnostics and repair of equipment accurately from long distance.
Accordingly, it can be seen that a need exists for a control system for automated sewing equipment that is simple and easy to install and to perform diagnostics on both remotely and on-site, and to maintain, and which does not require skilled technicians for its maintenance and repair, thus enabling customers in the field to repair and make modifications to the equipment as needed to expand its capabilities.